


hope's never quite the same

by onelastwit (trailtothetruth)



Series: twin hopes [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: M/M, also a major badboi, but we love him, drifter is a major sadboi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 11:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18467986
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trailtothetruth/pseuds/onelastwit
Summary: Drifter's gone a long long ways to escape hope. It comes back to him anyways.(sequel to my other work, don't give in to hope, kid)





	hope's never quite the same

You're running, nags an insistent voice in the back of his head, as he cards his fingers through Shin Malphur's short hair with a rough sigh. You're running, like you always have when shit hit the fan, because you're a coward and you'll never be anything better.

He tries to make jokes but - what is he doing really? Delaying the inevitable, disregarding his own advice, because hope is for those who are too scared to go out there and do it themselves, and he doesn't need hope where he's going. The whispers spoke of hope to him, and no matter how harshly he rejected it, throwing back days of starving and helplessness, of Dark Age villages trodden underfoot by Iron Lords, the whispers continued to speak of one, single thing to him. Hope.

He hates the feeling, that sparking feeling in your chest, the gentle warmth like a flicker of flame for a freezing man. Hope gets you killed, gets you careless, gets you believing something good _could_ happen. He doesn't do hope anymore.

So when he makes up his mind to strike out with his non-Shadow crew, find something worth using as bait for their long con, their gambit, Vale calls it, he makes up his mind and squashes every single inch of hope he can reach.

So, naturally, the warm feeling curling around his heart as he walks away pisses him off.

But it's easy to forget about hope when it's been years. Centuries. Centuries of exploring without hope, looking for something, anything. Then their scanners start picking up something. A planet. And it's energy readings are the wildest shit Eli's ever seen.

It’s repelling Light, bouncing it off, sending it careening back into space. There’s something on that planet, or about it, that he needs to see. Why? Well, he'll never tell his crew, but it reminds him of all those legends he'd heard about Thorn. How it suffocated your light, turned it back on you - all the crazy myths had to have some reality to them, and here it was.

Thorn or not, he knows there’s _something_ down there, and so Eli shoves every single scrap of his tattered hope down into that deep, dark hole in his chest, right alongside the memories of Vale’s mouth and a damning smile, dark laughter and blood dripping from his ears. It doesn’t matter. The cold, howling winds rip any spark of hope away and send it whipping into the ice storms, as their ragtag crew desperately searches for somewhere to set up camp.

But Eli knows this is what he's been looking for. This is the reason he's come this far, to find this for the Shadows - for _Shin -_ but he stops that train of thought right there.

Shin's gone, he tells himself, and when he comes back Shin will be dead or a burned-out husk of who he was, because Eli knows what happens to those who hope. But he can still bring home the bacon, all his prizes and shinies, and he can set up away from the Shadows, and let them have what they want. He doesn't care, he tells himself, in vain. He just doesn't care.

He tells himself that too when he draws on his crew, double-tapping one in the chest, hurling a knife - a real one, because their Light is gone - at its ghost. They all fall under him. He's reminded of his old crew as he steps over the bodies and out into the cold, completely alone. He doesn't care. The cold and the gun in his hands have sucked away any last shreds of hope he has. Now, it's survival, and nothing more.

The Light's gone. He must survive. There is no room for hope, or for caring. He must survive.

Somewhere in the cold, lonely dark, his ghost goes red, built from shells of dead ones, and he has no one left to talk to. So he works and works and works until his fingers are raw and bleeding, until he has died and starved countless times over. No room for hope here. Just survival.

He gets his ship working, gets the light-sucking creatures from that planet onto it. And even better, his own chunk of that deep, infinitesimal dark, that he can step into, that he can use little sacrifices (little is the keyword, tiny specks and motes of power) to summon things from.

He's always been a man after power. And he wobbles on the edge of getting drunk on it. Taken at his command, rising up in a moment's instant to take down his foes.. well, it's any man's dream come true ain't it?

Things change, slowly then all at once. The Light comes surging back to him. When he summons a flaming knife to his fingers, he thinks of Shin for the first time in a long time. But it doesn't last, because he becomes a part of larger plans. An accident with a Taken leads to him being saved by a mysterious, yet familiar woman. _Something_ appears behind his ship, and even he can feel the power radiating from it. Nothing of this world, and oh, does he like it. And then he sets course straight back to the Last City, where he hears a Titan might be sympathetic to his cause.

He tears Taken out of a screaming, dark plane of existence where his blood runs cold at the flickering light, and he is torn apart, time and time and time again. But he comes back together every time in a rush of Light, and he does not think of Shin anymore. Because he doesn’t need Shin. He needs nothing except the motes and the power.

And hope?  
  
Hope’s dead.

And he’ll adamantly deny any sort of hope or feeling for - anything - but how his heart aches in the cold silence of his ship. He misses Vale. He misses Shin. It is his greatest truth and his greatest failure. He misses the soft heat against his hands, growing sharper, pointed with each shuddering breath. He misses startlingly soft eyes, flitting to Drifter’s own quietly in small words only they knew. Damn it.  
  
But he knows this, and as Gambit begins, he pushes every inch of himself into it. There is time for nothing else, bargaining with the Nine and running Gambit and working himself to the bone, and he knows Shin is there, knows that someday the Gunslinger will come looking - because he always has, it is inevitable like death, they come together like puzzle pieces, mismatching but worn down enough that it works anyways.

He flirts with his ‘Dredgens,’ gets his fair share of flirts back. The heated nights searing with Light do not ease the ache in his chest. It worsens, actually. But he plays his part, because he made a deal. He brings the Darkness, and watches Shin take care of those who succumb. His heart sinks, further, impossibly, when he follows Callum’s body. Yes, he knows the part he’ll play. He knows all the words to say. Watches the Nightstalker who takes Malfeasance and her steady, dark eyes. Watches the Gunslinger at her side, too. Not the Gunslinger he wants, though.  
  
His jaw almost hits the floor when that unfamiliar Gunslinger jumps into Gambit using The Last Word, though, and his voice is rough when he pulls the two of them aside.  
  
“Hey. What the hell are you doin’ with that gun? That’s The Last Word!” His voice raises slightly, and the Gunslinger nods, tilting it appreciatively.

Shaking his head, Drifter chuckles, leaning in close to clap him on the shoulder. “You know you can trust me, kid. But you saw my friend that day. You know what the Man with the Golden Gun will do to you if he decides to.” He sees the glint in the Gunslinger’s eyes. He’s not afraid. Good. He knows his limits. “You kids’ll be the death of me..” He shakes his head, and the Nightstalker covers her smile. “Trying to play both sides, aren’t you?”

She nods. “We know where things’re headed, Drifter. We’re smarter than you give us credit for. Hero of the Red War’s gotta play a role, right?”

“Punks.” He looks at them both. He’s proud of them, somehow. Didn’t ever think he would be. You’re getting attached, aren’t you, the voice in his head nags, again. “You’re insane. I dig it..” He waves them off, though. “Be seeing you.” After they leave, he lets out a breath. They’re right. Things are headed south, and fast. But he’s always been good at adapting, and anyways, Gambit was always just practice. Training. Now it’s time for the heist.

Then his life is turned upside down, again.  
  
His lips are pressed against Shin’s, those warm hands coming up to frame his face, again, and it is everything he’s been dying for. It’s been centuries and Drifter’ll never admit it but it was all worth it to feel _hope_ kindling in his chest. Because god, he hates it and he hates Shin too, but he can’t help but to give Shin a cruel grin because he’s missed this.  
  
He has seen horrors he can’t even begin to speak about. Has carved this place of his own into the screaming surface of the world. There is so much to say in this moment, about the Nine, about the Light, about all he has seen, and so much on his shoulders, but that awful, cruel hope curls in his chest and he _hopes_ that one day he can tell Shin all the terrible things he’s seen.  
  
Shin smiles at him, finally, and he’s forgotten how to breathe because the sunburst Light seeping from the Gunslinger’s hands has reached into him. The memory of cold winds and darkness fades away with the warm flame, and Drifter _hopes._

**Author's Note:**

> i struggled so hard to write this but it was so worth. i love them so much....


End file.
